Recording Movement in Dreams

The fact that humans dream is interesting, but how we dream is what grabs many scientists, like those at Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Are dreams like movies, playing out in our unconscious mind, or are they something we can interact with? This is the question the researchers went after, and with the help of some lucid dreamers, they believe they have their answer. Lucid dreamers are people who can become aware of their dream state and assume at least partial control of it. By asking the dreamers to perform specific movements within their dreams, the researchers were able to connect observations they made with fMRI technology to actions parts of the dream. This is an important accomplishment, as there is normally no way to connect external measurements with events in a dream temporally. The dreamers were asked to clench their fists one at a time, for ten seconds each, and when they did the areas of the brain associated with those actions, when awake, lit up. This research may lead to scientists actually recording a person’s actions while they are dreaming, and allow greater study of this fascinating activity.